STOCK-HUSBANDRY IN MASSACHUSETTS. 183 



Swamp muck, forest leaves and road-siclc scrapings are all 

 useful so far as they go ; but it is slow work improving a 

 large farm by these alone, and while the improvement is 

 going on, the interest and taxes may be drawing upon it at a 

 greater rate ; so that our stern chase, which is always a long 

 chase, may bo in pursuit of a craft that is lengthening the 

 distance between us. So I have nothing to take back that I 

 have said in favor of commercial fertilizers, or of the leverage 

 they may give us ; but I wish to say further, that I believe 

 the great power which for many generations yet to come is 

 to keep New England agriculture abreast with the demands 

 of the age is a judicious system of stock-husbandry. 



Massachusetts annually purchases large amounts of both 

 hay and grain for feeding her horses and cattle, and yet, with 

 all this extra feed, she keeps only about one animal, including 

 sheep and young cattle, on each five acres of improved land. 

 Now there must be very little improved land in Massachu- 

 setts which, if put in suitable condition for cultivation, can- 

 not be made to produce forage enough, so that a single acre 

 may keep an average sized animal a year. The experience 

 of good farmers proves that two acres is a large allowance 

 for keeping a full-sized mature cow or ox twelve months ; 

 and on this basis we could keep two and a half times as many 

 animals as we now keep, and that, too, without buying either 

 hay or grain for them from abroad. 



I have but recently returned from a trip among the dairy 

 sections of the Connecticut River Valley, where I visited 

 several of the best-managed and most successful associated 

 dairies. I found that where associated butter-making had 

 bee^ introduced, the farmers are getting better prices for 

 their products than before, and that these better prices 

 are stimulating them to farm their land better. Yet, it 

 seemed to me that, as a rule, they are not farming half as well 

 as they ought ; that they are not keeping half the amount of 

 stock they might, and consequently are not making half the 

 profit that they would if they did more with the land they 

 own. The almost universal complaint at every factory I 

 visited was that the farmers do not make so much milk as 

 could be used, nor as much as the makers would like to use. 



It is a great gain to fifty patrons of a factory to have their 



